Posts Tagged ‘texas health crisis’
Your Food, Your Migraines
Understanding the link between what you put in your mouth and what you feel in your head.
Must Have Coffee!
If you’ve ever experienced a migraine headache, you have one more life goal than those who haven’t. That goal? To never have a migraine again. However, to meet that goal, you have to be well aware of the triggers that set you on the painful path to a migraine.
Since some of the most common triggers are those things you put in your mouth, you may want to keep reading to find out what foods and drinks you should avoid to keep migraines from getting inside your head.
Regular Stuff
In your day-to-day routine, you probably come across a lot of potential migraine triggers. From peanut butter and sour cream to raspberries and pizza, nearly every food can be a trigger. Some, however, are more common than others. In most cases, a food-induced migraine begins to rear its ugly head within 20 or 30 minutes of consuming the food or drink.
To avoid migraines, consider avoiding the following foods and drinks that are known to cause migraine headaches:
- coffee, tea, cola, chocolate, and other foods and drinks that contain caffeine
- extremely cold foods, such as ice cream, particularly when you’re hot due to weather or exercise
- alcoholic beverages, such as red wine, champagne, whiskey, and beer
- cheeses that have been aged to perfection and other foods containing tyramine (substance formed when foods age)
- foods that contain nitrates and various other additives, preservatives, or artificial sweeteners
Special Instances
In addition to specific food and drink, other diet-related issues can result in the mind-boggling pain of a migraine headache. Your body requires a healthy balance of vitamins and minerals to function properly, and your head comfort requires the same. Any time this balance is thrown off, you put yourself at risk for a headache.
One of the easiest headache-inducing dietary mistakes you can make is missing a meal. Life is busy, you’re always on the go, and sitting down to eat isn’t always possible. But when you opt out of mealtime, you’re upping your risk of a migraine substantially. Another simple way to mess up your diet and your head is through dehydration. Unless you are regularly drinking from a tall glass of water, you’re probably a little bit dehydrated. Decide to drink even less one day and your head could pay the price. A final cause of food-related migraines is fasting. Less common than the others, fasting from all sorts of food causes an immediate lack of everything your body needs to keep going strong.
A Hot Headache Problem
While some people suffer migraines after chomping into a spoonful of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, others have the opposite problem. They suffer migraine headaches when the temperature outside starts to climb. And there is actually research that backs their claims of high-temperature headaches.
According to one study, the risk of suffering a headache climbs seven and one-half percent for every increase of nine degrees Fahrenheit. What’s this mean for you? Either live somewhere with a cool climate, stay inside during the hot days, or be prepared to suffer heat-induced headaches.
Causes You Didn’t Consider
The list of migraine triggers can go on forever. But if you’re suffering from migraines and still aren’t sure why, you may want to consider these triggers.
Your Exercise. It may seem odd, but pushing yourself too hard in the gym can lead to stress-related headaches.
Your Hair. It may look great, but if you keep your hair pulled back tight or in braids all the time or wear an improperly fitting hat, the stress could result in a headache.
Your Perfume. More than likely, you know someone who claims to get headaches around strong scents. If you suffer migraines and are around strong scents regularly, it may be time to give up your favorite scents.
Your Habit. Smoking has long been known to bring on headaches of all shapes and sizes. Put out your risk for cigarette-induced migraines by kicking the habit.
Your In-Laws. Actually, anyone or anything that raises your stress level puts you at increased risk for a migraine.
Building a Healthy Smoothie
Smoothies are supposed to be healthy. Here’s how to make sure they stay that way.
Yummo, Coach like!
Ever since you first heard of smoothies, your mouth has been watering. When you’re sipping on a smoothie, your mouth is in taste heaven. When there’s no smoothie in your hand, all you can think of are strawberries, bananas, and blueberries. But if you’re not careful, your smoothies can turn into nothing more than an average dessert.
To make sure your smoothie is as healthy as it is cold and delicious, you’ve got to have more than a good blender. You’ve got to have the right building blocks as well.
Building Block: Fruit
In a healthy smoothie, the most basic building block is fruit. Ideally, you want to go with fresh fruits that aren’t sitting in sugar water or have been made unhealthy in some other way. Rather, you want fruit straight off the vine or tree. Raw fruit that hasn’t been tampered with will ensure you the most powerful smoothie punch.
Some of the most common fruits found in smoothies include bananas, strawberries, and blueberries. But don’t let this keep you from getting creative. No matter what your favorite fruit is, you can toss it in the blender for a delightful, flavorful smoothie. From cantaloupe and mango to pineapple, raspberry, and melon, you can include any fruit you can find in your smoothie concoction.
Want the thickest, most delicious smoothie possible? Toss the fruits you plan to use for a smoothie in the freezer before you go to bed. In the morning, toss them in the blender. It’s a simple, yet effective way to get the thick smoothie you want.
Building Block: Juice
Once you’ve got your fruits picked out, you’ll need to find a complementary juice. As with the fruit choices, there is one juice that is picked much more often than the others: orange juice. However, you can toss in whatever type of juice you want to spice up your smoothie.
For variations on your favorite smoothie, give apple juice, grape juice, or cranberry juice a shot. Each different juice will affect the consistency, thickness, and flavor of your smoothie, so keep trying out juices until you find the perfect flavor for your pallet.
Building Block: Yogurt
When you have lots of different fruits and flavors, you’ll probably want something to pull them all together into one cohesive whole. Enter stage left: yogurt. Low-fat or fat-free is the best choice, and since most yogurt falls into one of these categories, it is also an easy choice to find.
With the right amount of yogurt in the mix, your smoothie will go from a yummy treat to a must-have each and every day. While you’ll probably rely on vanilla yogurt for most of your smoothies, using strawberry, strawberry banana, blueberry, or other flavors will enhance your smoothie instantly!
Wake Up and Smell the Smoothie
Need a better way to get your day started? Get your morning off right with this easy-to-make Wake-Up Smoothie recipe.
Yields: 3 servings, 1 cup each
Preparation Time: 5 minutes
Ingredients
- 1 1/4 cups orange juice (go for calcium-fortified for added benefit)
- 1 banana
- 1 1/4 cups frozen berries of your choice (good options include raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, and/or strawberries)
- 1/2 cup low-fat silken tofu or low-fat plain yogurt
- 1 tablespoon sugar or Splenda Granular (optional way to add flavor that causes the smoothie to be a tiny bit less healthy)
Instructions
- Combine all ingredients and put in a blender. Cover and blend until the mixture is creamy and smooth. Serve immediately. Smile.
Nutritional Information Per Serving: 139 calories; 2 grams fat, 0 grams saturated fat, 0 grams monosaturated fat, 0 milligrams cholesterol, 28 grams carbohydrate, 4 grams protein, 4 grams fiber, 19 milligrams sodium, 421 milligrams potassium.
Roasted Red Pepper Chicken and Avocado Salad
Looking for a cool salad to fill you up this summer? Here’s a delicious recipe from my partners over at Prograde Nutrition for you.
Roasted Red Pepper Chicken and Avocado Salad
1 medium ripe avocado, peeled, pitted and sliced
1 tsp. lemon juice
1 bag (10 oz.) torn romaine lettuce (about 10 cups)
2 cups shredded cooked chicken
1 medium tomato, cut into wedges
1 small cucumber, sliced
1/4 of a medium Vidalia or Walla Walla onion, chopped
½ cup Red Pepper
1/2 cup Light or Fat-free Italian Dressing
¼ cup Parmesan Cheese
Directions:
Toss avocados with lemon juice in large salad bowl.
Add lettuce, chicken, tomatoes, cucumbers and onions; mix lightly.
Add dressing; toss to coat.
Sprinkle with parmesan cheese.
Serve immediately.
Hey, if you like that one they’ve got 196 more! Seriously, Prograde has a really cool 197 Healthy and Delicious Fat Burning Recipes ebook for just $4.95!
Check it out here: http://jimmahan.getprograde.com/prograderecipebook.html
Bad Breakfast Foods
A fattening, unhealthy look at some of the worst foods you can eat for breakfast.
Bacon!
Doughnuts
You knew it was coming, so may as well get it over with. Whether glazed, powdered, or cream-filled, doughnuts were made to be delicious ways to begin or interrupt your day. What they were not created for was to be a healthy way to get your day started right. Many companies have made it their mission to create the ultimate healthy doughnut, but every attempt has come off less tasty than the original. Instead of settling for something that tastes less than the best, leave doughnuts of all shapes, sizes, and health on the shelf.
Kids’ Cereals
You never want to grow up. You love your big-kid toys and your big-kid video games, and you’re still eating the same cereal you were when you were in elementary school. Unfortunately, those brightly colored, sugary sweet cereals have not become any healthier over the years. In fact, researchers from Yale University state that these kid-friendly cereals that are full of sugar and artificial flavors are usually less healthy than any cereals made for adults. So if your kids are eating the same colorful cereals as you, you’ll all need to change. Instead, look for something with four grams of fiber and less than four grams of sugar per serving.
Energy Bars
They’re crammed full of protein and go-get-em, and they fit in the palm of your hand. So what’s the problem? The problem is that alongside all that energy-boosting protein, there is also a lot of fat and calories. If you don’t spend adequate time each day to get rid of these extra fats and calories, your whole body is going to feel the extra pounds piling on. Instead of grabbing an energy bar for breakfast, only eat them right before or after an intense workout. That way you’re keeping your body fueled properly, but you’re also burning off most of the stuff you don’t want stuck to your hips.
Front Seat Foods
The mother of all bad breakfast foods is breakfast on the go. While fast-food breakfast is convenient and relatively inexpensive, it is also one of the worst ways to fill your stomach in the morning. Some of the most common options are sausage or chicken biscuits; biscuits and gravy; or bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits. Make any of these items at home and you’ll be on the border of unhealthy. Pick them up at a fast-food restaurant and you’re guaranteed a dose of artery-slowing, fat-producing food, served in a Styrofoam carton with a side of orange juice. And no, the 100% natural orange juice doesn’t magically turn gravy into a harmless or healthy substance.
Runners Up
Think your breakfast doesn’t need a face lift just because your favorite fattening breakfast treat snuck by without making the list? Think again. Here are a few other fattening breakfast foods to avoid.
- Sausage: Just as high in fat as it is in flavor, sausage can put a hurting on your good health.
- Pancakes: Whole-wheat pancakes aren’t too terribly unhealthy, but out-of-the-box pancakes doused in syrup is anything but healthy. In fact, anything doused in syrup is a bad idea. Paleo? don’t think so…
- Ham: For all the reasons to avoid bacon and sausage, keep your salivating mouth away from ham. Tastes great, more filling for your waistline.
Losing the Pregnancy Pounds
Don’t think it can be done? You’re about to be very surprised.
When you walk into the labor and delivery room, your belly is bulging. If the baby stays inside you one more day, you fear your stomach will simply explode. And when the contractions are over and your new little one has arrived, you look down and realize a shocking fact: your baby didn’t take all the extra weight from your body.
You can lose the weight!
Want to shave off 40 weeks of weight gain? Read on to get a few tried-and-true methods to get you back on the road to light.
Breastfeed. You may plan to have your baby feed on a bottle when you go back to work, but if you really want to see pounds fall by the wayside, nothing works as well as breastfeeding. Okay – so the jury is still out about whether breastfeeding will really get rid of those pregnancy pounds, but it’s definitely worth a try. Even if it doesn’t work, it won’t cause you to gain weight, and you’ll boost your newborn’s immunity and reduce your likelihood for breast cancer in the future in the process.
Eat. Before you got pregnant, you had to watch what you ate to maintain a healthy weight. Now that you’ve had baby, the same watchfulness is needed to lose pregnancy weight. If you’re breastfeeding your baby, do not cut back on your calorie intake. Regardless of whether you’re breastfeeding or using the bottle, don’t eat high-calorie or high-fat foods. Rather, go for anything stuffed with lots of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients. Need more information on nutrition? Check out our Killeen Fitness Boot Camp Nutrition page.
Sleep. Though sleeping doesn’t sound like something that is going to help you shed pounds, not getting good sleep is a sure way to hang onto pregnancy pounds. According to research, insufficient sleep increases stress levels, which can in turn increase your weight. On top of the stress-induced weight gain, feeling sleepy also makes you less likely to feel like exercising – a major way you can help your body fend off the weight that doesn’t look quite as cute now that it isn’t accompanied by a pregnant belly.
Exercise. Though you don’t want to jump headfirst into an intense workout regiment immediately after giving birth, you should begin implementing exercise into your daily routine as soon as possible. During the first few days after giving birth, go for a short walk. If it hurts of you get tired, stop and take a rest. Giving birth is a traumatic event on your body, and it can take a while to recover. Allow your body to recover in its own time, but don’t stop trying to help it along. 6 weeks after baby comes, jump back into working out at the boot camp.
Exercise Some More. Even if you breastfeed, eat right, get nine hours of sleep each night, and take a walk around the block each day, you may still a few pounds that cling on for dear life. If this happens to you, you will need to increase the amount and intensity of your exercises. For fun ways to exercise, check into “Mommy and Me” exercise classes that allow you to spend time with your child and get fit at the same time. You may also want to make your way back into the gym as soon as possible for some weight training. To make sure your routine isn’t putting you at risk, talk with your physician before beginning anything strenuous.
It Takes Time, Baby!
Though you may want to shed those pregnancy pounds the day after delivering your new bundle, you’re going to have to wait. You may even have to wait until next summer to wear that adorable new swimsuit you picked up with intentions of showing off your sleek abs weeks after giving birth.
In most cases, it only takes a couple of months to work off the pounds that baby brought on. However, research has shown that if you don’t lose the extra weight within six months, you may be stuck with it for the rest of your life. With that in mind, it becomes a little bit easier to get off the couch and hit the gym between breastfeeding sessions.
Ready now? Call Jim at Killeen Fitness 254-247-4999 to schedule a free workout and body composition assessment!
New: More Boot Camp Hours Coming In July!!!
Our classes are maxing out! We are adding TWO MORE time slots for you!!! Starting July 1, 2010:
Early AM M-W-F
Noon M-W-F
…You must preregister for these slots, we only have space for 10 folks per class.
If you are an existing athlete and want one of these, contact Jim for details.
Don’t delay or you’ll lose out!
2 New Boot Camp Athletes!
Welcome the following folks to our athletic family!
Kristi Everett
Primrose Ferere
Another Healthy Recipe From Primal Mama!
Primal Mama's Fajitas
New Boot Camp Athletes In Killeen’s Best Fitness Boot Camp!
We would like to welcome new athletes into our boot camp family!
Leslie Inman
Amanda Hall
Lisa Sweeny
New Athlete In Killeen’s Best Fitness Boot Camp
I would like to welcome Coleta Smith to our Athletic family!
